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Opera moves to WebKit

my.opera.com

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Re: Opera moves to WebKit

#131

Post by lucian1900 »

rplnt wrote: post #87
szalansky wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes and no. Less work for frontend guys I believe. More choice for you, because you can get the same decent looking pages (theoretically) with a different UI of the browser. And, IMO, here is where Opera wins - their UI is superior to Chrome's and Safari's.

Its ability to configure basically anything from user interface is far above any other browser. Chrome is a browser that I recommend to parents. It has dumbed down interface, zero options - perfect for average majority. It is still powerful when combined with dozens of extensions, but it still can't compete with Opera in this area. It's like KDE vs Gnome3 if that makes more sense for someone.

I like Chrome's UI. There's almost nothing it doesn't do that I'd want. I could totally do without extensions if I had to, but they are nice to have.

Re: Opera moves to WebKit

#132

Post by estel »

gcp wrote: post #123
geon wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Their rendering engine was a massive piece of original IP. How can it be worth anything when the competition is free?

If it runs faster, with less memory, or is easier to port to new platforms that the other browsers have problems reaching. Do you remember how long it took Google to port Chrome to Android? There was a Firefox and Opera release for Android even before Google got their own browser ported to their own OS.

But that wasn't a problem with Chrome's rendering engine: there were plenty of WebKit browsers on Android from the start (including Browser).

Re: Opera moves to WebKit

#133

Post by mcpoulet »

UnoriginalGuy wrote: post #62
cpeterso wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if Opera is making an overture to get acquired by Google or Apple. Opera's innovative browser features have always been a bigger draw than the details of its Presto rendering engine.

I seriously doubt it. What IP or userbase does Opera have that either Google or Apple would want? If either of the two of them wanted to copy Opera's browser features they would just go ahead and do so. If anything this makes Opera less interesting as a potential purchase. Their rendering engine was a massive piece of original IP.

Opera is a huge hit in asia. And this is where Apple and Google struggle the most to get market share. That would make a lot of sense for either of them to try to acquire Opera.

Re: Opera moves to WebKit

#134

Post by astrojoy »

Question: Where are the HN moderators? They are quick to hellban users but allow Opera to get the top 3 positions on HN's front page?

Opera is a browser and a company not to be trusted IMO. Never do mission-critical work with this sketchy software. I've given Opera plenty of chances and its always flaked out on me in the weirdest ways.

This browser also had the habit of mysteriously becoming my default browser without me actually doing it. That's when I could no longer even allow it to be installed on my system.

Sorry to be a wet blanket, but I had to share this in case anyone wants a different perspective.

Re: Opera moves to WebKit

#135

Post by benihana »

tripzilch wrote: post #128
jasonkester wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Opera was actually strict pro-standard.. sometimes for their own bad. Possibly. But they're also the only browser I'm aware of apart from IE that supports "document.all". And (at least as of 2007), they were still using IE's quirks mode box model if you didn't specify a doctype. As I said, they did a good job of trying to please everybody. You could code for Firefox or IE and have a reasonable expectation that it wou…

What do you mean, "possibly"? Either you agree that Opera implemented standards as strictly as possible (really the only way when you your own rendering engine with such a small market share) while aiming for compatibility at the same time (which is implemented by copying certain quirks--and O isn't the only one that does that--as well as having a large database of popular sites that are fixed with bits of custom JS)…

>What do you mean, "possibly"?

I'm guessing OP meant possibly for the "sometimes for their own bad" part of the comment.

Re: Opera moves to WebKit

#136

Post by neya »

From a designer's perspective -

I used to be a hardcore Opera user (as a regular consumer) till Opera 10, mainly because of the beautiful inbuilt download manager and the smoothness of their usability.

However, for professional work and testing - The only three browsers I use for testing these days are Chrome, Firefox and IE 9+.

I never used to consider Opera because, for MY website, the traffic from opera would be really negligible to make it worth the effort getting something right on their browser, though Opera would 99% of the times be almost as perfect as chrome, unlike IE.

Now, this move only makes designers' lives easier, needless to say. I'm just waiting for the day when Microsoft would put down their pride of using a stinky, inconsistent rendering engine and move to Webkit, just like Opera and that day would be the start of a new era - Where designers can focus on getting their designs right, than focusing on how to get them right on various browsers.

Cheers Opera, Great move!

Re: Opera moves to WebKit

#137

Post by tomelders »

I'll admit to being ignorant of Opera for far too long, and only really considering it by including an -o- variant in my css vendor prefixes.

But (rightly or wrongly) this news does mean I'll give Opera some serious consideration. If it's Webkit, I can use it with confidence and if Opera's developer tools are better than Chrome or Safari, then it will become my browser of choice.

I doubt I'm the only person thinking this way. So that's one more reason this could be a great move for Opera.

Re: Opera moves to WebKit

#138

Post by eekee »

There's one thing I can't stand in many of these comments: The blithe assumption that just because something is open-source, it -- and any fork of it -- could be maintained. I can't emphasise enough how wrong this is.

Look aorund you in the open-source world. Do you see dozens of forks of every worthwhile project? Hardly! The greatest diversity is probably that between Linux distributions, and for the most part they're only trying to make all the packages play nicely with each other.

Maintaining any software that's even half as complex as webkit, (or half as complex as any modern browser engine needs to be,) requires a ridiculous amount of work. Each fork would need to be supported by many people, each of which would have to be convinced that the ideas of one innovator are worth supporting. Then what happens is the really worthwhile ideas are often very hard to explain, while ideas which can be made to sound wonderful and which attract much help may be of very poor quality.

Re: Opera moves to WebKit

#139

Post by SkyMarshal »

jasonkester wrote: post #53

Smart move. I don't know a single web dev who tests on Opera anymore. I personally stopped worrying about it for any of my products when it hit 1.6% market share, and that was five years ago. They're essentially not supported by anybody, and haven't been for a long time. ... But that's never mattered, since they have always known it. And they went out of their way to make sure they rendered exactly like the dominant…

>I don't know a single web dev who tests on Opera anymore.

Hello. Now you know at least one. :)

Of course FF, Chrome/ium, Safari, IE take priority, but I still run everything by Opera too. I just love Opera and have since I discovered MDI > tabs in the early 2000s, among other things.

This change will make all that easier though, so nice to see it.

PS - I didn't downvote you, though don't consider your comment particularly worthy of upvotes either.

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